BOOKS: 'Oral history' relives 2004 Red Sox glory

Tuesday

May 6, 2014 at 2:08 PMMay 6, 2014 at 3:51 PM

There's no denying the appeal of the (literally) inside-baseball testimony that makes up “Don't Let Us Win Tonight," a lovingly constructed “oral history of the 2004 Boston Red Sox's impossible playoff run.”

Pete Chianca

You might think that you learned everything you need to know about the 2004 American League Championship Series from ESPN’s “Four Days in October” documentary -- and you’d probably be right. But even so, there’s no denying the appeal of the (literally) inside-baseball testimony that makes up “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight” (Triumph Books), Allan Wood and Bill Nowlin’s lovingly constructed “oral history of the 2004 Boston Red Sox’s impossible playoff run.”

It’s not quite a traditional oral history, in that many of the quotes aren’t newly solicited; instead, they’re taken from interviews given during those legendary playoffs, when the Sox returned from an 0-3 deficit to beat their Yankee archrivals in perhaps the greatest comeback in sports. This approach works in the book’s favor, since those reactions smack of thrilling immediacy -- they’re not filtered through 10 years of replays and the perspective of two additional World Series wins.

Wood and Nowlin do a great job of siphoning off any post-game platitudes in favor of quotes that get into the heads of the players and managers -- not to mention the GMs, owners, ex-players, medical staff and even the bat boy.

Through their testimony, the smaller dramas behind the series -- Derek Lowe’s “demotion” to the bullpen and eventual Game 7 redemption, Dave Roberts’ preparation for the Stolen Base Heard Around The World, the Rube Goldberg surgery that jerry-rigged Curt Schilling’s gimpy ankle -- all coalesce into a broader overarching story about grit, determination and sheer boneheaded luck. You know exactly what’s going to happen, and yet you still feel the bumps rise on the back of your neck.

By the way, extra kudos to the authors for devoting an entire chapter to the jeering sportswriters who piled on when the Sox were down 0-3. Hard to pick a favorite, but I liked this bon mot from the Providence Journal’s Jim Donaldson: “Only a bunch of idiots would continue to put their faith in this chronically overpaid and underachieving aggregation of ill-kempt characters ... Sure, they’re loose. They’re also losers.” Oops.

Of course, the ALCS was so compelling that “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight” winds up suffering from the same fate as the official 2004 World Series DVD, in which narrator Matt Damon tries desperately to wring drama out of what was an anti-climactic series at best.

You can skim the chapters on the games vs. St. Louis and go right to the post-World Series celebration, where the flabbergasted players were bombarded with accolades from fans who said they could “die happy” -- or who brandished pictures of loved ones who hadn’t lived to see it. (A chapter of fan reactions would have been a nice touch, although I imagine it could have gotten repetitive pretty quickly.)

The historic nature of that ALCS -- really, the almost too-perfect Hollywood construction of it, in a way that would get a professional screenwriter laughed out of the room -- makes it more than worthy of book-length treatment. But the great thing about “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight,” named for first baseman Kevin Millar’s famous declaration going into Game 4, is that Wood and Nowlin’s meticulous efforts make it into much more than a souvenir for Sox fans.

Instead, it’s a historical document that, behind all the game-time drama, reverberates with a love of the sport that would resonate with any baseball lover. Maybe even a Yankee fan.